Month: febrer, 2016

I contend that in trying to deal with modernity, the reformers of the Catholic liturgy have taken wrong turnings and made mistakes. The interesting question, though, is why these wrong turns of modernity seemed to be the right ones to make and the mistakes made seemed to be so attractive.

The deepest lessons I learned from celebrating the traditional form of the Mass is this: I am only a poor instrument of a supernatural and utmost sacred action, whose principal celebrant is Christ, the Eternal High Priest. I feel that during the celebration of the Mass I lost in some sense my individual freedom, for the words and the gesture are prescribed even in their smallest details, and I am not able to dispose of them. I feel most deeply in my heart that I am only a servant and a minister who yet with free will, with faith and love, fulfill not my will, but the will of Another.

One can compare the traditional Mass with a lion: Let him free, and he will defend himself.